Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Abolghasem Pourreza ¹
• Sedigheh Salavati ²
• Somayeh Sadeghi darvishi ³
• Mahdiyeh Salehi Nasab ⁴
• Hamed Tabesh ⁵
• Fatemeh Mamivand
• Zahra Kishizadeh ⁶

¹ Professor, Health Eeconomic , Tehran University of Medical Sciences,Tehran,Iran

² PhD Student, Health Policy, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz And Tehran University of Medical Sciences,Tehran,Iran

³ BSc , health services management, deputy for curative services, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences,Lorestan,Iran

⁴ MSc Student, health services management, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran

⁵ Assistant Professor, Biostatistics, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran

⁶ BSc Student, health services management, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran

Abstract

Introduction: Hospitals to meet the challenges of rising costs, forced to adopt strategies for efficient use of resources. The average length of stay is an important and functional indicator of hospitals efficiency evaluation. This study conducted to modeling the patients’ length of stay in infectious ward of Razi hospital in Ahvaz.Methods: This was an analytical cross sectional study that conducted in 2012. The population was patients that hospitalized in infectious ward of Razi hospital in Ahvaz. The sample was medical records of inpatients admitted to the infectious ward from march 2011 to august 2012(n=1000). Data were gathered by a form. The Mann–Whitney, Kruskal wallis, Spearman correlation and log regression in SPSS16 were used for analyzing.Results: Average and median length of stay was 9.4 ±8.1 and 7 Days respectively. There were the significant relationship between average length of stay and  the patient’s health status at discharge ,type of insurance, number of visits,  patient’s location, total number of tests and total number of diagnostic tests(p<0.05).The only variable for prediction of model was  number of tests.Conclusion: Pay attention to necessity and appropriateness of tests, diagnostic tests and visits seems to be useful. Also designing processes to shorten the tests conducting can be effective in reducing length of stay.Key words: Length of Stay; Patients; Hospitals.